Pizzelle, round and rolled--I finally got the hang of the shaping. I can imagine the conversation in the Gourmet Magazine office when the bakers wanted to publish this recipe. "The only problem is: What can we call these?" "Right. Nobody can pronounce 'Krumkake,' let alone 'Pizzelle.' "Just Americanize it. They look like curled wafers." "Done." In the throes of the Cold War, I guess readers weren't expected to accept a foreign name for their cookies. These cookies come from everywhere but here--Norway, Italy, Germany. Credit where it's due, I say. Now, picture a San Francisco flat about the time this recipe was published. My mother's cousin, Maria Crosetti, could always be found with a project in the kitchen, even in her eighties. I called her "Mud-EE-ah" because I didn't grasp the gentle tongue-flip of the "r" in the Italian version of her name. I was 9. The day of our visit, she m...
I began this blog when my mother was ill and needed enough of my attention that I could not concentrate on longer-form works I wanted to write. I set those aside to distract myself with cookie-making and this blog. Please find my new blog (2020) entitled "Time NOT Lost" at karenbrattesani.blogspot.com, where I explore the behavior I see around me -- both my own and that of others -- and what it says about our changing culture during the coronavirus pandemic. And, I hope, beyond.